E.on wants to double my monthly direct debit

zagfles

Jakubk wrote: »

There is no excuse for this, first of all they are all sharing the historic usage from every household going back many years.

Secondly it is not a difficult thing

Energy usage increases in Autumn and more so in Winter, then back down again in Spring and even lower in Summer.

Of course some households will use more than others but if you have the historic variance for that property will not vary to the point where they need to charge £1600 extra per year and double a direct debit.

They's clearly capable, see this example from First Utility where they show how the industry uses Annualised Load Profiles for gas and Profile Coefficients for electricity which give monthly percentages of typical annual use for each month.

https://www.first-utility.com/help/bills-and-payments/how-do-you-estimate-my-usage

If you switch suppliers and they choose to set the initial DD to the estimated annual bill divided by 12, they should not be allowed to change it until the anniversary of joining, unless your usage is out of line with the expected seasonally adjusted usage.

If the supplier wants the account to balance on a date before the year is up, eg on 1st May, they should be required to set the initial DD to the expected usage in the period between joining and 1 May, accounting for seasonality as well as expected annual usage.

Similarly if the supplier want the account to remain in credit all the time, they should set the initial DD to an amount that keeps the account in credit based on expected annual usage and expected seasonal usage.

The way they all seem to work now is not much short of a con trick.

Former_E.ON_Company_Representative:_Malc

Penn_Wooding wrote: »

There are two people living in my house, my mother and I. I've been paying £130 a month direct debit to e.on. However, I received a letter this morning telling me they want to increase my monthly payment from £130 up to £264. It says my balance is £676 which is what I assume is what I owe? Even so, more than doubling my monthly direct debit seems excessive and to be quite honest I'm not happy about it at all. I don't understand how we can possibly be using this much energy.

Should I get a recalculation because I'm not having them double the amount and then in six months time they've got loads of my money sitting in their bank account.

Penn_Wooding wrote: »

It doesn't make clear whether I'm in credit or not. "It just says this includes your current balance of £676.77. If you have a credit balance, this could be less than how much we think you'll use"

Even so, doubling my direct monthly payment is in my opinion completely absurd. That's an extra £1600 a year.

I'll have to check and see what's going on. I'm disabled so it's very difficult for me to actually look at any readings. I know that we used extra heating, but I just cannot believe that we've used this much. And as for electricity, I've only got a small electric fire in the main room I use on a daily basis, I haven't even got central heating.

Hello Penn Wooding and sorry for the late reply. I missed your post.

Already some good advice on here. Thanks all. I can understand the shock of receiving a request to increase your payments by so much. As others have said, make sure the bills are based on actual meter readings and not estimates. If they're estimated, we'll be happy to rebill accurately if you're able to let us have up to date readings. We can then review your payment arrangement.

Talk to us if you're struggling to read the meter. We can arrange for a special visit by one of our representatives to take readings. Going forward, you might want to consider having a smart meter. These send us readings automatically via electronic messages. We don't charge to fit smart meters and it saves you the hassle of taking readings.

If we've had readings recently, it could be you've had a catch-up bill. These come about where we haven't had readings for a time and charges have been lower than the energy used. Catch-ups can come as a shock and tend to give a false picture as they lump more usage than would be expected into a shorter period of time.

Once it's established the billing is accurate and not estimated, we'll be happy to look at changing your payment arrangement to spread the balance over a more manageable period.

With our Monthly Direct Debits, we aim to achieve as near as possible to a zero balance by the time of the annual payment review. To do this, we base monthly payments on current prices and past usage. A change to either usually triggers a request to raise or lower payments. They also take into consideration any credit or debit balance on the account. The aim is to stop accounts building up too much credit or debt. At the annual review, any credit over a fiver is automatically refunded.

As Hengus says, we've an online tool to give you more control over the arrangement including being able to change the monthly payments to better reflect different circumstances. It's the Direct Debit Manager and you need to have registered with our website to use it. Provided the account is billed up to date, payments can be changed by up to 20 per cent up or down. By up to 5 per cent up or down without readings. Before confirming the new amount, we'll let you know by how much we expect the account to be in credit/debit if the payments are changed but usage doesn't alter as expected. There's more about this on our website.

Given we're asking to increase your payments by so much, I suspect the £676.77 is a debit balance. If it were a credit balance, the amount will be followed by CR. There are no letters following the amount if it's a debit balance.

If you do look at our website, check out the saving energy pages too. There are some good tips to help save money by saving energy. This includes help with insulation and boiler replacements through the Government funded Energy Company Obligation (ECO) scheme.

Have a look as well at the Warm Home Discount pages. Customers eligible for this scheme receive a payment towards their winter bills. Last year it was worth £140. You can register an interest for the 2018/19 scheme through the website and we'll be in touch towards the end of the summer to see if you're eligible.

Sorry again for the late reply Penn Wooding and hope this is of interest.

Malc

RandomQ

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Malc wrote: »

Going forward, you might want to consider having a smart meter. These send us readings automatically via electronic messages. We don't charge to fit smart meters and it saves you the hassle of taking readings.

Malc

Malc

I have seen your posts before and you seem to be a very understanding representative.

However, offering anyone a smart meter at this time is totally wrong when the industry is supplying crappy SMET1 meters till at least mid October.

Also rather than say

"We don't charge to fit smart meters "

it would be more honest to say

"Energy suppliers are not allowed to charge you a fee for installing a Smart Meter but we will get you later with exorbitant standing charges."

As this person is likely to want to get out of EON at the earliest opportunity recommending a Smart Meter is really bad advice as it will become dumb when they leave due to SMET1 incompatibility issues.

You know, I would just not mention Smart Meters unless you are asked.

Focus on why your Direct Debits have doubled to such an obcene level.

No Customer should EVER have their Direct Debit doubled without proper engagement and checking.

orangesnaps

This is what happened to us. The direct debit payment that they proposed for us was too low to build credit in time for our winter usage. I always take monthly meter readings for both gas and electricity and the first two bills we got (we were billed quarterly) I could see that it wasn't enough but it said on the bill that they didn't think it would need changing yet and will wait for the next bill to come through, come January (Nov-Jan) they wanted to up it from £55-£172 to cover the debit that we had in our account for our Nov.-Jan usage and because it was still so cold until April we couldn't recover and barely cleared our January bill (around £300+) in time for the next statement (April which came to around £330+).

zagfles

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Malc wrote: »

With our Monthly Direct Debits, we aim to achieve as near as possible to a zero balance by the time of the annual payment review.

When do you do the annual review? Is it on the anniversary of joining, or is it at some other time of the year, for instance in the spring?

If the latter, then if a customer joins you in, say, the autumn, do you set the initial monthly direct debit to their estimated annual bill divided by 12? Or do account for the seasons (eg by using Annualised Load Profiles/Profile Coefficients) and work out likely usage over the period between joining and the annual review?

To do this, we base monthly payments on current prices and past usage. A change to either usually triggers a request to raise or lower payments. They also take into consideration any credit or debit balance on the account. The aim is to stop accounts building up too much credit or debt. At the annual review, any credit over a fiver is automatically refunded.

Yes. But do you account for seasonal usage if the first review is less than a year since joining?

matelodave

I know what my consumption profile looks like and I can predict within a few ££ what my consumption will be every month of the year and I can work out when and by how much I'll be in credit or debit.

I give my own estimate to the energy company and providing they don't start faffing about with my DD then I'll balance out within a few ££ at the end of my contract.

However this seems to be beyond the capabilities of most energy companies even though it's not really rocket science to profile most customer's energy consumption and it all goes wrong when they try and recalculate DD's based on the previous quarter.

That said it does rely on customers having an idea of what they are using and making sure that their bills are correct. They happily accept estimated readings and then wonder why they get ginormous bills or increased DD's.

Most problems arise when customers don't get their bills corrected, don't send in meter readings and don't review their own direct debits. It's not just a one way thing to blame onto the energy company, customers have a responsibilty as well

RandomQ

That is what I was going to say but not as well

zagfles

matelodave wrote: »

I know what my consumption profile looks like and I can predict within a few ££ what my consumption will be every month of the year and I can work out when and by how much I'll be in credit or debit.

I give my own estimate to the energy company and providing they don't start faffing about with my DD then I'll balance out within a few ££ at the end of my contract.

Indeed. The problem is they do usually faff about with the DD, when there's no need.

However this seems to be beyond the capabilities of most energy companies even though it's not really rocket science to profile most customer's energy consumption and it all goes wrong when they try and recalculate DD's based on the previous quarter.

I've done at least 4 switches where the following has happened:

1) I give them an accurate estimate of annual usage
2) They set a DD based on 1/12th of expected annual bill
3) Come Spring, they seem surprised I'm in debt and want to increase the DD to pay off the "debt", because they couldn't possibly have forseen that a debt would build up in the winter months.

That said it does rely on customers having an idea of what they are using and making sure that their bills are correct. They happily accept estimated readings and then wonder why they get ginormous bills or increased DD's.

Most problems arise when customers don't get their bills corrected, don't send in meter readings and don't review their own direct debits. It's not just a one way thing to blame onto the energy company, customers have a responsibilty as well

Sure - customers are to blame if they don't provide readings or accurate estimates of usage. But when they do, the energy companies still get it wrong because it seems beyond their comprehension that usage in winter is higher than summer.

Sosumi

zagfles wrote: »

Indeed. The problem is they do usually faff about with the DD, when there's no need.I've done at least 4 switches where the following has happened:

1) I give them an accurate estimate of annual usage

...

Sure - customers are to blame if they don't provide readings or accurate estimates of usage.

By what process are you able to predict accurately whether next winter will be mild or severe?

zagfles

Sosumi wrote: »

By what process are you able to predict accurately whether next winter will be mild or severe?

It's an estimate! Which was accurate, as it turned out. But the point is - I didn't build up a debt because my estimate was out. I built it up because the energy company chose to set a DD based on average use and then seemed shocked that I'd built up a debt over winter!